including the weekends. they'll only be in session for 126 days. roughly a third of the year. that's it. the other two-thirds of the year is reserved for time not spent at work. there are three months next year when the house will be in session for a grand total of eight days. so if you liked the do-less than the do-nothing congress we've had this past year, you are going to love the next congress. next year. don't blink because you might miss them. now it's time for "the last word." . . a no-brainer for boehner. let's play "hardball." ♪ good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. let me the start tonight with this. somebody has got to break it to mr. boehner, your side lost. romney, remember him? he's the guy who ran on the rich man's platform. the hands off the big boys' ticket. he's the guy who said his fellow

2%ers have your backs. mr. boehner, ye of limited memory, the voters looked this issue directly in the eye, they heard your guy, romney, playing palace guard for the plutocrats, and they said i think i'll vote for the guy who is looking out for the middle class. i think i will let that guy go back to bain or whatever. time for mr. boehner to stop protecting the rich. it's result clear. it's winner right there in the white house trying to do what the people reelected him to do. joy reid is managing editor of the grio, and david corn is washington bureau chief for mother jones and the author of the ebook "47 percent." like the way i lowered my voice there? today the president took his tax pitch to a factory in the philly suburbs and he made clear the rich must pay their fair share.

the taxes will go up for the top 2%. obama's job number one, a tax cut for the 98%. the rest of the people. let's listen to him. >> it's not acceptable to me and i don't think it's acceptable to you for just a handful of republicans in congress to hold middle class tax cuts hostage simply because they don't want tax rates on upper income folks to go up. all right? that doesn't make sense. the senate has already passed a bill to keep income taxes from going up on middle class families. that's already passed the senate. your members of congress, like allyson and chaka, other democrats in the house, they're ready to go, they're ready to vote on that same thing. if we can just get a few house republicans on board, we can pass the bill in the house, it will land on my desk, and i am ready, i have got a bunch of pens ready to sign this bill. >> 30 minutes after the president was finished, house speaker john boehner held a press conference, and he left unanswered the president's call for decoupling that 98% from the richest 2%, and he gave a

pessimistic assessment of the situation. let's listen to mr. boehner. >> there's a stalemate. let's not kid ourselves. when i come out the day after the election and make it clear that republicans will put revenue on the table, i took a great risk. and then the white house spent three weeks trying to develop a proposal, and they send one up here that calls for $1.6 trillion in new taxes, calls for a little -- not even $400 billion in cuts, and they want to have this extra spending that's actually greater than the amount they're willing to cut. i mean, it was not a serious proposal. and so right now we're almost nowhere. >> let me start with -- let me start with joy on this thing because you and i often agree. if we don't, we don't, and we'll live with that. but this whole thing here, i

think boehner has never accepted the fact that the rates have to go up at the top. there's something about deductions and all this finesse. they lost the debate. if there's any issue that came out of the campaign, the president is dead right on this, he made his case clear. the polls show it. the public wants to have some tax fairness. they don't want the top 2% to hold this thing up. boehner doesn't want to hear that. why not? is he unable to hear it? does he not want to hear it? is he afraid of his own people in his party that won't let him do what he wants to do and has to do, which is cut a damn deal before christmas? >> i think it's the latter. i think john boehner is in a nightmare situation. it could not be a cleaner case for republicans defending only the tax cuts for the top 2%. this is very clear. mitt romney tried to parse it and say, well, maybe we'll get revenue from capping deductions. maybe we'll go after the mortgage interest or some other deductions. that was litigated. they lost. it's simple and clear to

everyone that 98% of the tax cuts could go through tomorrow, today, any time if boehner got out of the way. but he still has the rejectionists in the lame duck caucus, and i think he's a little afraid the right flank might come at that speakership he has to reup for on january. he has to talk the tea party, talk even though he knows it's a losing proposition. >> i know you're a progressive, and that's why i love you. but let's talk politics. why does a political party that hopes to get 51% of the country in the next presidential election put all its stock in 2%? >> well, you're dealing with reality. the reality -- >> yeah. >> the tea party caucus of the house went from 55 to 51 -- >> they're not rich people. these tea party people. >> it doesn't matter. they are against taxes because they think it fuels government, and they're against government. they're against compromise, particularly against compromise with this particular president for a whole host of reasons. and we have the same dynamic we

had back in 2011 when john boehner i think left to his own devices would cut a deal within five minutes with the president -- >> let's talk about -- we disagree about the importance of the cliff. i think it's damn serious business because who knows what the world is going to react -- >> the market is not going to like it. >> we don't know. forget the market. the world economy -- my question is would the republican party like to go over the cliff hanging onto that 2% of rich people and say that's why they did it? can they live with themselves if they do that? >> in some ways the politics for boehner becomes easier, i don't like calling it a cliff, after you go down the slope or whatever you want to call it. >> why? >> because if nothing happens between now and the end of the year, all the tax cuts, poof, they disappear. you come back the first week in january and you pass a bill. then the tea partiers, boehner can make the argument to them if they want to be reasonable, now

you're voting for a tax cut. not for everyone, but for 98%. before that happens, the tea party people will say we're voting to raise taxes on the rich. if you let it happen on its own -- >> do you buy this, joy? that people don't get what's going on? they know what the mechanics of this thing are. >> let me finish one second. the tea partiers have to worry, some of them, about being challenged from the right if they vote for anything resembling a tax hike. if you wait until after the slope hits, you can say it's not a tax hike. so that may help -- >> i think you're really playing down the intelligence of the people on the right, that they don't know what -- >> i'm not giving a lot of credit of intelligence to tea partiers. >> they know what a tax increase is, and they know what a fiscal cliff is, and they disagreed on that, and they do worry. if this market crashes in the world and every country in the

world is watching us like a bunch of crazy people -- >> they were willing to do this -- >> we disagree on this. the country goes down, and the rich republicans are blamed for it. that's why i think a lot of rich people on wall street are saying to boehner, stop it already. we can live with a little tax increase. we're loaded up here. just move on and don't screw up the economy because we'll lose a lot more money if this market crashes to a second great recession. >> chris, i think to some extent the market has priced in the notion we would go over the fiscal cliff -- >> you're wrong. no. everybody -- who you talking to? i keep talking to people and they -- who you talking to? >> i actually spoke with a source the other day who is in washington, he's an attorney, who said, listen -- >> a lawyer? >> a lawyer but speaks to a lot of folks that are wall street types who says the market could take it for a couple of weeks. we're not talking months. >> the cake is baked and they think the intelligence of politicians is up to this challenge. >> but wall street doesn't really have a lot of faith in this process to be able to get done. they have priced in just a little bit that this could happen for a while. maybe not for months, but you wouldn't see the market necessarily crash like the next day. you'd have time.

>> thank you, joy reid. thank you. tonight, how their own polls fooled the romney campaign into thinking they had this baby won. what went wrong for those guys. did republicans lose the election because voters rejected mitt romney or because they rejected what romney was saying he believed leave it to congressman louie gomez, the old birther himself to suggest that the obama administration is in league with the muslim brotherhood. my memory of what americans had, two political parties that were modern and moderate. that was a long time ago. we are going to talk about the days of eisenhower. this is hardball, the place for politics.

welcome back to "hardball." there's a reason mitt romney's team seemed confident in the days leading up to the election. remember how they were? their internal polls showed romney on the brink of victory. the electorate they told themselves existed bore little resemblance to the people who showed up to the polls. "the new republic" magazine obtained the internal poll numbers from the romney camp in the days leading up to the november 6th election. in iowa the campaign's numbers showed them tied with obama. in reality obama beat romney by about 6 points. in colorado romney's team thought they were up by 2.5. they actually wound up losing by 5.5. in new hampshire, romney's polls had him up by 3. the new repep luck showed his numbers were off in wisconsin, pennsylvania, and minnesota. a closer look shows more clearly why their confidence peaked right before the vote. over the last weekend there, the romney numbers showed romney gaining strong momentum in these key states. in wisconsin, obama lost 4

points in the polling just as romney gained 4 tying up the race. in new hampshire, obama lost 4 while romney gained 3. giving him a decisive lead. the magazine quotes a romney aide on election night talking to romney's son tagg as the results were coming in. he looked like he was in a complete state of shock, as if these numbers cannot be real. to make matters worse, their polling told them florida and virginia, two states that romney lost, were in the bag. the republican party is left asking itself what went wrong and how they fix it. john brabender is a republican strategist and top adviser to rick santorum, and robert shrum, democratic strategist and columnist for the daily beast. john, you're on the inside. you know something about this. do you understand how somebody would think that the electorate that's going to participate in 2012, in a general election with barack obama, an african-american, a democrat, and a relatively popular president, would create a different electorate than the one you saw say in 2010 or in a primary situation?

>> well, i think -- as you know, every poll starts with an assumption. here is who we think is going to show up and vote. therefore, that's who we ask the question of. republicans, and not just the romney campaign but republican pollsters all across the country, guessed wrong. we didn't see the intensity that there was there for the president, particularly among young voters. we oversampled male white voters. and, you know, you add all that together, and you're going to see two, three, four-point differences. plus, the assumption always is that the incumbent is not going to pick up any votes on election day. i think this time -- >> i think that's right. bob, you're a pro. let's go through the first one. perception is about the enthusiasm level. we were watching the last election. you could see well before the election of 2008 the excitement for obama. i felt it myself obviously at the rallies we'd go to. all the speeches. this time around it was an effective excitement. it wasn't we love this guy's speeches. the speeches weren't that great this time by obama, but it was effectively excited because they

decided to vote for other reasons. i think voter suppression efforts besides. how come it wasn't palpable that this guy was going to get the same turnout he got last time? >> well, it was clear to joel benenson who was the obama pollster and who got it right on the money. it was clear in the average polls. i think john is right about this, there was an assumption inside the party that there was going to be a different electorate. you cannot explain simply by your conception of what the electorate was going to be those crazy momentum numbers that you showed over the last weekend. there was something else wrong with that polling. >> what do you think it was? was it getting together with governor christie and that great show of bipartisanship? was it the fact your side couldn't push the benghazi issue? what changed the last weekend toward obama? >> certainly, i think sandy changed things. it let the president be president. i think that helped.

>> it changed the subject from benghazi. >> i would also say this race was more of a referendum in some way on mitt romney than it was the president, and that's unusual -- >> does your side -- i know you're a true believer, and i respect that. do you think -- i mean it. do you think they didn't really believe he believed? >> no, i don't think that was the problem. i think the bigger problem was two things. they never personally connected with him. they never felt this attachment, and they didn't see him as -- >> personal. >> second of all, i think we failed middle income blue collar voters who feel we no longer understand their life, no longer are fighting daily for them, and they think what we're about are just the social issues and fighting for tax breaks for the wealthy. that's not what we're about, but we sure let that perception happen. >> my dad is a regular republican, not a right winger. he used to say the trouble with my party is they care about the big corporations too much, like ge he used to point to. romney senior adviser stuart stevens defended his campaign and his candidate in a big article he wrote. he said the campaign had the right ideas but failed to do a

better job -- oh, my god -- communicating to women and hispanics. they communicated all right i would argue, quite well. >> i think we should have done a better job reaching out to women voters. the governor has a great record on women's issues. we should have done a better job articulating that record. we should have done a better job reaching out to hispanic voters. we should have done it earlier and in a more effective way, and i think looking forward those are questions for the party. i think we have a very good message there. we just have to do a better job with it. >> bob, i would argue that the message got out from akins, got out from mourdock. i think a lot of -- especially the numbers show single women were really turned off -- they like the looks of romney in that first debate. a lot of numbers showed they like what they saw out there, strong performance on economics, but then they go, this other stuff is scaring me away.

that's what i think. >> i don't think the structure of the race changed even after the first debate, and it wouldn't have unless the president turned in the same kind of performances the second and third time around. look, romney did reach out to hispanics. he reached out and pushed them away. he talked about 11 million people self-deporting. he used the phrase illegals. he did everything he could to make sure that that constituency which rove and bush understood that was critical to republicans winning the presidency wouldn't be there. the most critical thing he wrote was, our ideas carried the day. they didn't carry election night. that's what counts. >> i think voters are very aware what the issues were and what side both sides took. speaking last night at a gala, senator-elect ted cruz, a real hero of the tea party from texas, gave a postmortem on the election. he said, do you want to know why barack obama won 70% of the vote? tone on immigration contributed, but i think far more important was 47%. republicans nationally, the story they conveyed was that the 47% are stuck in a static world,

we don't have to worry about you. i cannot think of an idea more antithetical to this country's principles. >> did he mean the 47 thinking or the fact that david corn and mother jones got that out that he had said that out down there. >> part of it was -- >> was it the thinking or the words. >> early on, the obama people did a good job with the perception that mitt romney wasn't george bailey, he was mr. potter. and then we said narratives that confirmed that to people. >> lionel barrymore. >> we can't do that as a party. as a party we have to let everybody know we're fighting for them, understand their lives, and, frankly, we failed this time, but we did well in 2010, and we can do well again. >> the banker's eye, right? i mean, tip o'neill used to say the guy who had an eye missing, the glass eye, that was the warmer one, the glass one, for the banker.

did he just look like an elitist, cold-hearted guy? >> i don't always agree with john. i seldom agree with john, but he's right. what happened in the summer was that the obama campaign brilliantly went out and defined mitt romney. they defined him with the bain ads. 18 years after he lost that campaign to senator kennedy, he wasn't ready for those bain ads. i found it inexplicable they didn't have a comeback. he defined him on the auto bail out, on tax returns. >> bob, you taught them the lesson that first time. they should have been ready -- bob shrum, i'm out of time. always an honor to have you on. have a nice weekend. john, you're always welcome here, sir. up next, something else that won't help republicans out of their mess, u.s. congressman louie gohmert is out there suggesting the obama administration is in cahoots with the muslim brotherhood. who is buying this malarkey? malarkey is a good word. this is "hardball," the place for politics.

back to "hardball." now to the "sideshow." first, after president obama and mitt romney got together for their post-election lunch yesterday, jon stewart reflected on the event with help from the '80s movie "coming to america." >> the event was actually closed to cameras, but we have some footage of governor romney arriving to the white house. i believe that's him there, and then he's getting out, and then -- the campaign is over so he doesn't have to pretend anymore. he can finally wear that serengeti lion sash he hadn't been wearing. also we've heard from republicans who are ditching grover norquist' no tax pledge, but how one of them freed himself without admitting he was backpedaling. from chris gibson, representative gibson signed the pledge as a candidate in 2010 for the 20th congressional

district. regarding the pledge moving forward, congressman gibson doesn't plan to resign it for the 19th congressional district which he now represents. well, as msnbc's joy reid said yesterday, that's like breaking up with someone by changing your phone number. also, tonight the apps weigh in. during the campaign the smartphone super pac app provided fact checking information and let viewers rate political ads. which ad came out on top? for the democratic governor's association think obama care, pants on fire and yosemite sam. here it is. >> not going to be a part of again socializing health care in the state of texas. ♪ >> the ipb, what that is will be a board that will tell you, bob, whether your level of productivity is worthy of

receiving the rationed care that will be the result of obama care. ♪ >> anyway, the ad that got the most votes in the fail category was the one called join the fight to repeal obama care from conservative super pac restore america's voice. that's hardball for now. coming up next, "your business" with j.j. ramberg. i think i did. oh? you did? whoa, ladies, easy. hi. cascade kitchen counselor. we can help avoid this with cascade complete pacs. see, over time, cascade complete pacs fight film buildup two times better than finish quantum. to help leave glasses sparkling shiny! too bad it doesn't work on windows. okay, i'm outta here. cascade. the clear choice. prego?! but i've bought ragu for years.

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